March 24, 2010

Pope Personally Covered Up Case of 200 Child Rapes by Priest

Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit.

Church officials never reported the rapes committed at the school for deaf boys in Wisconsin to civil authorities. The boys and their parents who went to the police were brushed off. A secret canonical trial was halted after the rapist wrote personally to Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, asking that he not be "put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health." He died a free man and still a priest in 1998.